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Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Use All the Jelly Rolls!

I’ve succumbed to the allure of precuts on many occasions. Who can blame me? They’re a cost-effective way to get a cross-section of an entire line, and because they are precut, there is less work for me.

Jelly rolls are not as versatile as other precuts, though, so they tend to linger in my stash. I have four of them right now, and it’s time to put them into service as quilts. Two of the four feature Christmas fabrics, so I decided to use them up first by making quilts for Christmas giving. The holiday deadline was the kick in the pants I needed to get going!

First up: my Ridiculously Easy Jelly Roll Quilt. Most of the fabrics are from a jelly roll of Basic Grey’s Evergreen, but I supplemented that lot with some Evergreen fat quarters and some strips from a jelly roll of Basic Grey’s 25th and Pine. My goal was to cull the lighter, airier fabrics and sew them with a few well-placed color-saturated selections. I omitted all the super-Christmassy fabrics, striving for a more wintry quilt that could be used throughout the cold months here in New England.

I love the results. The Scandinavian feel of the Evergreen line is going to be perfect for the recipients I have in mind.

You could figure out how to make your own Ridiculously Easy Jelly Roll Quilt, but why would you do that when I’ve already done it for you? Check out the tutorial here.

This is a happy accident. I miscut the background fabric and had to make
do with a neutral pattern in its place.

Christmas quilt #2 is in the works. It’s going to feel great to trim my jelly roll stash down by two!

Do you have a go-to pattern or two for your jelly rolls? If so, I would love to hear about it. And if you’re able to resist jelly rolls in general, can you teach me how to do that, too?

This looks wonderful, really wintry. I have never used pre-cuts but have one jelly roll that I bought last week to make up a quilt for my daughter for Christmas. Now I wish I had some Christmassy ones too!

I've never worked with a jelly roll before because I'm never certain if the pattern that I have in my head can be made up with a jelly roll size... I'm always afraid that I'll want to make a certain pattern and end up needing a layer cake or some other pre-cut size. This looks like this is a really good go to pattern... you had me a Basic Grey! Thanks for the tutorial link. Love your WIP!

I love the little oops with using the neutral instead of background - I actually wish you'd done that more with this quilt cause it would have been such a great little surprise throughout it!

But seriously, I have at least 2 jelly rolls in my craft room that I look at and go, what am I going to do with you? Maybe I'll just sneak over to your house and leave them in your mailbox :P but seriously I think my go-to for jelly rolls would be the only jelly roll quilt I've done twice, my Jellied Lonestar on the Moda Bake Shop. It does a great job of making that classic pattern look modern with those fun jelly roll prints that I'm drawn to!

Oh it looks fantastic! I know what you mean about jelly rolls lingering in the stash; I think I've used all of mine for now but they are irresistible when you find a line that you really love aren't they :)

I don't buy too many jelly rolls -- usually layer cakes are the ones I can't resist. I often cut my own "jelly roll strips" though. I have made quite a few variations of the jelly roll race quilt, usually making it in sections (or cutting it into sections) and adding things to it. My flickr page shows a bunch of them. One of my favorites is here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/quilts_by_lisaAlso, Jo's Country Junction has a free pattern called Meet in the Middle that works with jelly rolls. I've made it once and want to make more versions of it. I really like your quilt, will have to give this pattern a try! Thanks for sharing.